Once upon a time
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
HAVANA – Once upon a time there was a king named Herod. One day, his aides told him that, according to reports, a child had been born who would become a king. Fearful of losing his power – oh, the fear; oh, the power – Herod immediately ordered that all newborn males be slain. He carried out a massacre.
To commemorate that tragic event, every Dec. 28 we Cubans observe the Day of the Holy Saints. In other countries, the date is moved into spring, a time for blossoming flowers, butterflies and an increased libido, as some say.
What’s important is not the date on the calendar but how that tragedy is remembered: generally with ruses, tricking friends and neighbors with clever hoaxes so we can then shout to them “Fooled ya!” and have a laugh at their expense.
Our culture has turned the murderous sword, the massacre against dozens of children, into an amusing festivity. Black humor (even that name is eloquent) has been with us for a long time, and is as much a part of our “civilization” as violence.
We are the subjects and objects of a legacy practiced in various ways through centuries, with methods that are increasingly exquisite: Hitler’s gas chambers were so fine-tuned and precise that their operators even calculated the number of people that could be killed with a cubic meter of gas and how long it would take to kill them.
So, why should we be surprised when someone takes a firearm and coldly assassinates 20 children and 6 adults in a school? How long will our shock last after we see the images on our television screens? Until the next announcement of a beauty pageant winner?
Within three weeks, how many of us will remember the name of the teacher who sacrificed her life to save a few of her small pupils? With a 30-second commercial we erase the heroic acts of others and don’t even ponder how much of our childhood died with them. Much less our co-responsibility for the crime (a euphemism, because the proper term is complicity.)
Violence and fear are rooted in our societies, especially in the wealthy ones, such as the United States, where there are more firearms than citizens; where the right to own firearms, enshrined in the Constitution, is still defended even though its original intent was to give each citizen a defensive capacity in the event that Britain, recently defeated, tried to regain its colonies.
While this is a matter that should be resolved (a difficult enterprise because the National Rifle Association possesses other types of weapons, called money and lobby) the universal reason is not the triggers but the fact that, on a worldwide basis, we live – rather, die – in a sick society.
Psychologists say that people’s adaptation to society is a symptom of health. That qualification may come from the supposition that our societies are healthy. But are they? Let’s look at ourselves.
We adapt to sick social fabrics, where the practice of the predicated ethical values and principles is rejected daily by the communication networks and the actions of politicians. The former on one side; the latter on the other.
We are consistent with the disease. We adapt to it, carry the virus and transmit it. For centuries we have been killing one another in different ways, up to the technological and sophisticated methods of today, whose damage is defined as “collateral.” Is it?
Once upon a time … Today? Tomorrow?
The status of a healthy society and healthy citizens involves turning around. It involves a revolution of the spirit and the structures.
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